UP-STAT 2015 : Fourth Joint Conference of the Upstate Chapters of the American Statistical Association

Call For Papers

You are cordially invited to submit an abstract for presentation at the Fourth Joint Conference of the Upstate Chapters of the American Statistical Association, which will be held at the State University of New York at Geneseo on Friday and Saturday, April 10-11, 2015. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, February 27, 2015.

The theme for this year’s meeting is “Statistical Modeling in the Era of Data Science.” It is important to emphasize the central role of statistics in the domain of what has become known as “Data Science”. We are interested in all submissions related to statistical modeling and inference and their role in making sense of large amounts of information.

* Novel approaches to data analysis – If you have developed new statistical methods or approaches to the analysis of data, we strongly encourage you to consider submitting an abstract to present your work.

* Applications of statistical and computational methods to interesting data sets – If you are an applied statistician working in academia or in industry, and have worked on interesting problems involving the analysis of large, complex data sets, then consider submitting an abstract to present your problem and the analysis that you performed to gain insight into your scientific question.

* Issues in Data Science Education – If you have taught courses related to data science to high school students, undergraduate students, or graduate students, consider giving a presentation on novel approaches that you may have implemented. Presentations that touch on the role that other disciplines should play in developing curricula in this field would also be of great interest.

Although the Conference has a defined theme, we strongly encourage abstract submissions on any aspects of statistical methodology and applications. In addition, given the vital importance of promoting statistics in secondary education, we would especially encourage abstract submissions dealing with statistics education in secondary schools (and beyond). Presentations could involve motivating examples of experimental design or statistical analysis derived from real-world problems; strategies for emphasizing the connections between probability and the development, evaluation, and implementation of statistical methods that are used to analyze data; ideas on how to integrate frequentist and Bayesian philosophies in a balanced curriculum; or any other innovative ideas concerning this topic. As part of this education sub-theme, we are soliciting one session of “fun statistics” examples. This might include short demonstrations of probability examples (e.g., the Monty Hall problem or the birthday problem) at a widely accessible level that others could replicate and show to their students. We will award a prize for the best presentation in this session, and this competition is open to students, high school teachers, and anyone else with interesting, informative, and entertaining examples.

As you prepare your abstract and presentation, please keep in mind that the focus is not on technical rigor, but instead on clarity of exposition and ease of access by our audience, which may have a substantial number of students and AP Statistics teachers. As a matter of fact, we strongly encourage students and AP Statistics teachers to participate actively. Prizes will be awarded to students for the best presentations.

Abstracts must contain at most 300 words. The deadline for the submission of the abstract is Friday, February 27, 2015, and notification of acceptance for a poster or oral presentation will be sent out on Friday, March 13, 2015. To submit your abstract, please send a pdf version of it to the Conference Program Chair, Dr. Michael McDermott, e-mail: abstracts@up-stat.org. Please indicate ASA–Upstate Abstract in the “Subject” line of the e-mail and also indicate whether you are a student and whether you prefer to give an oral presentation or a poster presentation (or are willing to do either).

This year, to encourage more interaction among conference attendees, we will have a conference banquet on Friday, April 10, 2015. The poster presentations will be given during the cocktail hour before dinner beginning at 6:00pm. Banquet registration is $40 for ASA members, $50 for nonmembers, and $15 for students and AP teachers (regardless of ASA membership). The banquet will be at Mary Jemison Dining Hall with cocktails from 6:00pm to 7:00pm and dinner from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.

To further encourage student participation, we will hold an urban analytics competition. A team of no more than 4 students may enter the competition by submitting their entry information on the conference website at http://www.up-stat.org by Friday, February 13, 2015. The information should indicate the team name, school, and the names of the team members. The data set will be accessible from the conference website on February 13 to teams that have entered the competition. Teams will be required to submit their results and the code that they used to obtain their results by Friday, March 20, 2015. Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 teams, all of whom will be asked to present their results at the conference. Further details concerning this competition are available on the conference website at http://www.up-stat.org.

This year, we are extremely fortunate to have Professor Kosuke Imai from the Department of Politics at Princeton University as our keynote speaker. Professor Imai is an entertaining and engaging speaker who has made important contributions to causal inference, survey methodology, and applications of Bayesian statistical methods to social science research. The title of his talk is “A New Automated Redistricting Simulator Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo”.

Please, be sure to visit the conference website at http://www.up-stat.org for more details on registration and other important aspects of the conference.

Yusuf Bilgic (bilgic@geneseo.edu) and Carol Haddad (haddad@geneseo.edu) from the Department of Mathematics at SUNY Geneseo are the local contacts for questions about travel and accommodations. Check the website for general information.

We eagerly look forward to seeing you at the Conference at SUNY Geneseo on April 10-11, 2015.

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